Foothills Gateway clients help feed Loveland's hungry

Foothills Gateway partners with Loveland's Community Kitchen to pick up and package pastries

By Shelley Widhalm Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:
07/14/2013 09:45:07 PM MDT

Jeff Deese, who receives services at Foothills Gateway, fills a tin with pastries Friday at the Loveland Community Kitchen. A group of people from Foothills Gateway help out at the community kitchen twice a week picking up, delivering and packaging donated pastries.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

Twice a week, a few developmentally disabled individuals from Foothills Gateway pick up, separate and package pastries from Starbucks to give back in two ways.

First, they help Loveland's Community Kitchen, 427 N. Garfield Ave., provide food for the needy and homeless in Loveland, and second, they help others with needs get decent food free of charge.

"We feel that it is great to be able to give back to the community," said April Rikhoff, community outreach coordinator for Foothills Gateway in Fort Collins. "It certainly takes a lot of agencies to be able to support the vulnerable populations that are in our community."

On Friday, four individuals -- Jeff Deese, Collin Mitchell, Kyra Moth and Brett Slattenow -- picked up pastries from the Johnstown Starbucks to do the sorting. They worked through five containers of muffins, scones, doughnuts and other pastries that Starbucks regularly donates to charity after they're pulled from the shelves.

Additional Community Kitchen volunteers pick up pastries from the three Loveland Starbucks, so that nearly every day of the week is covered.

Moth and Deese packed pastries in open-faced cardboard boxes that Bonnie Blair, activity coordinator, dated and took to the kitchen area. The pastries, along with donated items from grocery and bread stores, are set out on a dessert table to complement the lunches purchased from Meals on Wheels next door at a cost of $2.86 each.

Slattenow's task was individually bagging some of the pastries for Community Kitchen clients to take to go, while Mitchell took the pastries to a cart in the back of the dining area.

"I did good," Moth said at the end of the job, which took 40 minutes to complete.

Moth and her crew have expressed that they like to do the work, Blair said.

"I can never get out of them why they like it. They just like it," she said. "They do talk about liking to help people."

The Community Kitchen, which provides a nutritious hot meal seven days a week to the hungry and lonely, works with several agencies, groups, churches and individuals to serve the meals. The nonprofit established the partnership with Foothills Gateway nine months ago at the agency's request.

"The whole organization runs on volunteers," said LuAnn Ball, director of the Community Kitchen and the only paid staff member.

The Community Kitchen's 300 volunteers serve 22,000 meals a year at an average of 75 a day during the week and 60 on the weekends, Ball said. The nonprofit also provides to-go bags and pastries.

The nonprofit is operating on a $138,000 budget this year and is supported by grants and donations, along with partnerships, such as the one with Meals on Wheels. That nonprofit rents the building to the Community Kitchen at a rate of $1 a year.

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